Neighbor states Minnesota and Wisconsin received exemptions from the National Voter Registration Act’s public disclosure provision with the passage of the NVRA more than 30 years ago. The special treatment has gone on long enough, according to federal lawsuits filed Wednesday by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF).
A smug response from Wisconsin’s top election official in an email chain unwittingly sent to a PILF researcher underscores why ending the exemption is long overdue.
The lawsuits allege the carveouts for Minnesota and Wisconsin violate the principle of equal state sovereignty and should be declared invalid.
‘For Public Inspection’
As PILF notes in the complaints, Congress passed the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, also known as the Motor Voter Act, to make it easier for Americans to register to vote and to stay registered. It requires states to “make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” The idea is to make sure the public can review the state’s voter roll maintenance activities, a key safeguard in election integrity.
The NVRA is “a complex superstructure of federal regulation atop state voter-registration systems,” the U.S. Supreme Court stated in its 2013 ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.
But Congress exempted Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, and Wyoming from the NVRA because they offered same-day voter registration. North Dakota, too,
